.au domain — meaning, price and how to register

What does .au mean?

The .au extension is the national domain of Australia, delegated in 1986 and held in the IANA root zone since. It is administered by auDA, the .au Domain Administration — the self-regulatory, not-for-profit body endorsed by the Australian government to run the namespace. For most of its history, Australians did not register .au directly; they used a purpose-labelled second level, above all com.au for businesses, plus net.au, org.au, gov.au and edu.au. com.au became the unmistakable mark of an Australian business online.

The headline change of recent years arrived in 2022, when auDA opened direct registrations — short names such as brand.au — sitting alongside the established com.au. It was the biggest structural shift in the extension's history and gave Australian organisations a crisper option.

Who uses .au?

Australian businesses, banks, retailers, media, universities, government agencies and individuals all sit on .au, overwhelmingly via com.au with a growing presence on direct .au. Australian consumers strongly associate the extension with a local, accountable business, so for any company serving the Australian market a .au address materially helps trust and conversion. The presence requirement reinforces that: a .au reliably signals a genuine Australian connection.

That combination — strong local recognition plus a real eligibility gate — is what makes .au one of the more respected national domains in the Asia-Pacific region.

.au registration rules and requirements

.au is a restricted ccTLD built around an Australian-presence test. To register a com.au or a direct .au you must demonstrate an Australian connection — most commonly an Australian Business Number (ABN) or Australian Company Number (ACN), Australian citizenship or residency, or the ownership of a trademark registered in Australia. auDA verifies this through accredited registrars. For direct .au there are also name-allocation and priority rules: when the namespace opened in 2022, existing com.au holders were given a priority window to claim the matching .au, and trademark/exact-match considerations apply to contested names. An overseas buyer with no Australian tie cannot register a .au.

How much does a .au cost?

.au is moderately priced, typically around $13 per year (Australian registrars usually quote in Australian dollars). Direct .au and com.au are priced similarly, renewals are stable, and there is no premium pricing on ordinary names. Many Australian businesses simply hold both the com.au and the matching direct .au to protect their brand.

Is .au good for SEO?

For an Australian audience, .au is a sound choice. As a country-code TLD it tells search engines the site is oriented to Australia, lifting relevance for Australian searchers — precisely the market presence-eligible registrants are serving. There is no ranking penalty and no special boost over .com; the gain is geo-relevance plus the genuine local trust the extension carries. The usual caveat holds: an Australia-focused signal does little to help you rank elsewhere. See our guide to comparing TLDs.

.au vs alternatives

For an Australian organisation the live questions are direct .au versus the entrenched com.au, and .au versus global .com — .com has worldwide reach, but .au wins domestic trust and an enforced sense of authenticity. Among national codes, .au's presence test is comparable in strictness to Canada's .ca, and tighter than Britain's address-only .uk or the US .us Nexus. For a different regional flavour, the Indian .in is open to the world, where .au deliberately is not. If you qualify and sell into Australia, a .au is a strong default.